Torry Harris

Torry Harris Business Solutions

Rule Engines save the day

Author - Manjunath Hanasi

www.thbs.com

Note: The contents of this Document are considered Torry Harris Confidential. No part of this Document may be reproduced in any form by any means without the prior written authorization of Torry Harris Business Solutions.

The problem
!Have you developed/seen code with so many nested if statements that actually looked like a nest? !Have you spent sleepless nights debugging code when you modified one of those 'if' statements and found that it distorted the next if statement? !Ever wondered how others implement these? Then read on; this article is exactly for you. If our logic requires triggering different actions based on many conditions, then implementing such logic in the code becomes a hinderance. Understanding the code becomes even more difficult for people maintaining such code. In addition, if the conditions are changing frequently, then incorporating these quick changes within the stiff deadlines becomes nearly impossible. We would ideally like to keep these changing conditions out of our code. Another reason for this separation is that Business people know the rules well and it would be better if they were allowed to write the rules rather than the developers. Rule engines allow us to do exactly the same.

What are rule engines and how do they solve my problem?

Rule engines are specialized applications that read a set of rules from external sources (known as rule database or knowledge base); identify the correct rule(s) based on input conditions and execute the corresponding action(s). Rule engines are a great way to collect complex decision-making logic and work with data sets too large for humans to effectively use. Rule engines separate the source code from the rule database. Hence, the code does not have to change if there are any changes in the rules. The code looks much neater, simpler to understand and easier to maintain. Business people own the rules while developers own the code.

Case Study
After delving sufficiently with theory, lets look at some practical usage of rule engines and how they solve our problems. For one of our telecom clients, we had to implement a component that determines whether a customer can register with the telecom operator. The decision was based on several factors and was expected to alter frequently. Just to give you an idea, the decision was based on the following input conditions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. The front-end channel the customer is using, i.e. web-based or through CSRs Customer's scheme, i.e. Monthly Rental (MR) or Pre-paid (PP) Customer status, i.e. New or Existing Response from External Credit History checking authorities (NCHC and ECHC) Response from systems checking customer details against fraud profiles (PC) Response from Address Verification systems against blacklisted addresses etc (AV)

To complicate the matters, some conditions could be ignored if some of the pre-conditions are met. E.g. If the response from External Credit check entities is to DECLINE, then customer must be declined irrespective of responses from other systems. Lets see how we can implement the above logic in the code itself.
// request is object containing input data if (request.getChannel().equals(WEBSHOP)) { if (request.contractType().equals(PAYM) { if (request.custStatus().equals(NEW) { if (request.getCreditCheckResp(ACC) && request.getProfileCheckResp(ACC) && request.getAddressCheckResp(ACC)) { response.setDecision(ACCEPT); } else if (request.getCreditCheckResp(DEC)) { response.setDecision(DECLINE); } else if () { } } else if () { } } else if () { } } else if () { }

Clearly the above code is unrealistic, but it shows the complexity. The next thing we might think is, we will store all the possible values in a database table like the following: Contract Final Cust Channel NCC FPC FEC HAC type Decision status WEBSHOP WEBSHOP WEBSHOP PAYM PAYM PAYM NEW NEW NEW ACC ACC DEC ACC DEC ACC ACC ACCEPT REFER DECLINE

The above might look like a perfect solution as we can get the final decision in one wonderful SQL query. But there is a problem. Consider that the input data contains the following responses. !DEC from NCC !ACC from FPC !ACC from HAC

The SQL query will not fetch any results with the above data in the tables. For the query to work, we will have to add all the combinations of rules even if we know that DEC from NCC system is sufficient to arrive at a final decision (As discussed previously, if response from Credit Check is 'DEC', the customer should be declined irrespective of responses from other systems). Though the solution is better, adding all the useless data into the above rule table seems pointless. Is there some way we can avoid this? The answer is yes; rule engine comes to our help. There are many open source Java rule engines. We have chosen 'Drools' as our rule engine because it supports rule specification in an excel sheet. The following is the rule specification spreadsheet:

As can be seen, Business people could easily add the rules to this spreadsheet document. This excel sheet will contain additional information that is relevant to developer and is hidden to the business user.

Note: When Drools reads this excel sheet, '$param' is replaced by the value in the column

The code using the rule engine APIs is as follows:

private RuleBase _ruleBase; private void loadRuleBase() throws SAXException, IOException, IntegrationException { InputStream stream = this.getClass(). getResourceAsStream("RPD-Fraud-Decision-Table.xls"); _ruleBase = DecisionTableLoader.loadFromInputStream(stream); } private void executeRules(DecisionRequest req) throws SAXException, IOException, IntegrationException, FactException { WorkingMemory engine = _ruleBase.newWorkingMemory(); engine.assertObject(req); engine.fireAllRules(); } public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { loadRuleBase(); // Populate DecisionRequest req object containing input data executeRules(req); // Print the decision stored in the request object by Rule engine System.out.println(Final decision: + req.getDecision()); }

Given the above excel sheet, Drools reads the rules and executes them according to input conditions (data). The above solution is much neater, simple to understand and implement. It clearly separates the roles of Business analyst and developer, hence reduces considerable amount of time in development and testing of the applications. Pros and Cons of Drools
Advantages:

!Drools is completely open-source and freely downloadable from the Internet. It uses very liberal ASL/BSD/MITesque license. !Drools conforms to JSR-94 (Rule Engine API) specification. !Drools rule APIs are easier to use. !Drools provides very good documentation. !Drools rule specification language is fairly easy and flexible compared to other rule engines. !Drools supports rule specification in Excel Spreadsheets. !Drools's performance is excellent. !Commercial support available. !Supports multiple semantic modules Java, Python, Groovy and C#.
Disadvantages:

! !Dependencies on lot of JAR files. !Initial load time for rulebase is high due to on-the-fly compilation of rule database (Janino embedded Java compiler).

Glossary

Term
MR PP NCHC ECHC PC EC AC CSR

Definition
Monthly Rental Also known as Pay Monthly/Post-paid customers Pre-paid customers - Also known as Pay As You Go Credit History Check (verify the credit of new customer) Credit History Check (verify the credit of existing customer) Profile Check for customers Eligibility Check for customers Address Check for customers Customer Service Representatives

Article sources: ! ! ! ! ! ! Why Use Rules http://drools.codehaus.org/Why+Use+Rules Legacy Drools site http://drools.codehaus.org/ Drools site (v3.0) http://labs.jboss.com/portal/jbossrules Drools Decision Tables http://drools.codehaus.org/Decision+Tables Java Rule Engine API http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=94 Some Guidelines For Deciding Whether To Use A Rules Engine http://www.jessrules.com/jess/guidelines.shtml

Torry Harris Business Solutions (THBS) is a US based IT service provider with development facilities in India and China. The services offered are in the areas of SOA, Testing, Offshore Product Development and IT Enterprise Services. The company, started in 1998, has for several years delivered a large variety of middleware services to enterprise clients around the world. Now, with a large pool of highly skilled technologists and rapidly growing, the company remains focused on the middleware and integration space, implementing large projects across the US, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. For more information, contact us at torryharris@thbs.com. Web: www.thbs.com